Notes, too

The artist's work is generally characterised by a wide variety of materials and approaches, including printmaking, drawing, multiples, sculpture and land-art.

With unusual processes or basic material, he explores how to change artistic boundaries. This portfolio links not only to his first portfolio 'Notes' from 1986 but refers to other prints and sculptures. The small head of a dog in the second sheet links to 'Notes' as well as to a detail in 'El Maktoub Maktoub' (1990), but changes its meaning through the different context. The subtle use of blank space, often in stark contrast to black surfaces, or the well balanced creation of half-tone plates form a body, which makes this portfolio a typical and important statement of his work.

Nominally inspired by Lucretius' De rerum natura, Piero di Cosimo's The Forest Fire takes its scientific subject and embellishes it with fantastical creatures from the artist's imagination: Bulls, bears, lions and deer-like creatures with human faces all flee wearily from a fire.

Rubens' portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel dates from about 1629. The Earl was a great collector, and Rubens had painted the earl's wife a few years earlier on a visit to Antwerp. This drawing in pen and ink with a chalk base is unusually informal, reflecting perhaps the comfortable relationship between artist and patron.